1. Back in the groove: 00:09

I had a totally awesome day at IBM today, crunching some data and
doing some nifty photocloud visualizations of all the people who had
blogged about a certain topic. I sorted it by domain in order to
collocate people from the same lab, and resized the photos according
to the number of posts they had made, linking each picture to the
respective blogs. I then ran the same analysis on their bookmarks.
Next week, I'm going to do a 2D plot... =)

It was _tons_ of fun hacking together a little Java program to do the
analysis. I had to look up a lot of things in order to do the first
program. It took me a while to dump SAX in favor of DOM, but once I'd
gotten the XML parsing code out of the way, I wrote the data analysis
quickly. My code wouldn't win points for elegance or efficiency, but
it works. I wish I had either Ruby or Python on that system - heck, I
could do this stuff in Emacs Lisp. I think I'll go install the Windows
versions of my favorite programming languages as soon as possible,
although I might have to clear it with IBM first.

Today put me firmly back in the programming/hacking camp. I couldn't
pry my fingers off the keyboard. =) Mark had to call me to make sure I
didn't miss the 3:55 bus. I just had so much fun writing glue code and
crunching all the data. In terms of geek stuff, this is where I
belong...

2. Toastmasters: 00:29

If I give the universe a chance, it does its best to be absolutely
wonderful. =)

I had misgivings about the Toastmasters speech
contest held Thursday, but when I gave myself permission to just go
ahead and do it, I had tons of fun. I gave a speech entitled "I Will
Learn How To Cook... Or Die Trying". Frequent readers of my blog (none
of which were among the audience) would recognize some of the
misadventures I've had. =) I'll post the MP3 one of these days. (I
really should start an infrequent little podcast...)

My contest performance was only the second time I'd run through that
particular version of the speech. Still, I had no problems connecting
to the audience, treating them as friends, and making them laugh. I
missed a few jokes I had wanted to make, but it flowed together well.
I'm still having problems ending on the strong note everyone expects,
probably because I pour a lot of energy into the beginning and middle
as well.

Even though I threw the revised speech together as hastily as a
stir-fry on a starving Saturday night, I won second place. =) The man
who won first was a really cool Toastmaster, and his speaking skills
are far beyond mine. Lots of things to learn!

Mrs. Castillo would be thrilled to hear that people liked my use of
props. I can think of no other cause for this but the drama in
education program we had in grade school. =) My father and my sister
must share the credit for anything I might know about humor and
storytelling. My mom's encouraging note earlier this morning was the
source of my energy during the speech. And oh, so many people who keep
me going and make me laugh... If I spread sunshine in people's lives,
it is because I get so much from others!

I need to work on speech organization a bit more, and endings are
still one of my weak points. I have plenty of things to learn, and I
love that. I don't want to be a good speaker. I want to become a
brilliant speaker so that I can inspire people not only to adopt the
ideas I want them to consider but also to improve their own
communication skills. =)

3. Level up! Steak and potatoes: 02:13

After giving that cook-or-die speech, I felt like treating myself to
something special. So for today: pepper steak and mashed potatoes!
This turned out to be surprisingly easy to prepare. Sure, it wasn't
melt-in-my-mouth tender, but it was fine.

4. Level up: Salmon!: 23:56

I cooked salmon for the first time today. =D I followed the recipe for salmon with avocado with lots of liberal changes: green bellpepper instead of orange, plum tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes, and salmon steak instead of salmon fillet. Despite all these changes, it turned out quite well.

I prepared aglio et olio penne (hah! garlic and olive oil!) with
sauteed mushrooms. The penne was a bit undercooked, but I'll fix that
next time. I took it out slightly before 9 minutes because I like my
pasta a little firm, but next time I'll let it get a little softer.

I'd love to hear about any questions, comments, suggestions or links that you might have. Your comments will not be posted on this website immediately, but will be e-mailed to me first. You can use this form to get in touch with me, or e-mail me at [email protected] .

Page: 2006.03.24

Updated: 2006-03-2501:53:5001:53:50-0500

NOTE: ANTI-SPAM MEASURE NOW IN PLACE. Please answer the following question with the right number in order to send me your comment.